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Saturday, September 18, 2021
Leeches Reveal Biodiversity Treasure in China
Researchers used DNA from leeches' last blood meals to find out what animals live where in China's Ailaoshan Nature Reserve.
Researchers used DNA from leeches' last blood meals to find out what animals live where in China's Ailaoshan Nature Reserve.
Nala Rogers, Staff Writer
September 17, 2021
(Inside Science) -- You can't argue with 30,000 leeches. In the largest study of its kind, researchers used the blood-sucking worms to reveal a marvelous variety of mammals, birds and frogs in China's Ailaoshan Nature Reserve. The findings demonstrate the value of the park and help establish leeches as a conservation surveillance tool.
"From a conservation angle, the number of endangered, near-threatened [and] threatened things that they found with this was just awesome," said Michael Tessler, a biologist and leech expert at St. Francis College and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who has collaborated with the research team in the past but was not involved in the new study. "That this method is capable of finding those things I think is very powerful, and I think they showed some really important patterns."
A paper describing the findings is available online, although it is not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal. The researchers were inspired by...
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